Inside the mind of a Dark Lord
by poppiecake
Summary: Voldemort gets a few hours of peace and quiet. What does he do? Not much. Please R&R!


A/N- The idea for this fanfic popped into my head while I was writing Harry Potter and The Fowl Heir, and I thought it would be fun to write another.

This story, by the way, takes place sometime during the sixth book. I'm not sure when, but before … dies and after Voldy moved out into the open. So, here goes……

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Lord Voldemort was bored. Yes, bored. His followers, (or minions, as he secretly preferred to think of them) were all out doing something dastardly (on his orders of course. They needed his orders even to breathe) and he was alone in his secret hideout.

His secret hideout being a room in the flat above the shop, Borgin and Burkes, in Knockturn Alley. It was an obvious place for aurors to look. And they had looked. Several times, in fact. Voldemort had been reduced to hiding in the secret potions cabinet. How embarrassing would it have been if Kingsley Shacklebolt had opened the door to get ingredients for a potion to cure his sore throat, and found the Dark Lord hiding in there? All because he had forgotten his invisibility cloak. He should have gotten one of his minions to get him another one. Now there was a good idea.

"Oy, get me an invisibility cloak in here, pronto!"

No reply.

Then he remembered. His minions were out. Shoot. Looks like he just had to sit there and think.

He conjured a solid gold throne and footstool into the middle of the room, and flopped down onto it.

Bad idea. Not only was the gold very cold, it was also very hard.

"Ouch!"

With another flick of his wand, the throne and footstool now had padded green cushions. He flopped down onto the much more comfortable seat, hoisted his long legs onto the footstool and relaxed.

A drink would be nice. Raising his wand lazily, a table appeared next to the throne, with a large glass resting on it.

Now what to drink? Firewhiskey? Nah. Butterbeer? No, not that either. Pumpkin juice? He didn't feel like it.

Voldemort frowned. What would he have? His minions probably all thought he drank blood or something. As if. Blood was for vampires. Lord Voldemort was many things, but a vampire was not one of them.

He'd never even had a close call with a vampire. They all seemed to be afraid of him for some reason. Probably the fact that if they even thought of biting his neck, they would find themselves with no neck. Or head, for that matter.

But back to the drinks. He decided what he wanted, but what if a minion or someone came in?

Voldemort decided that he didn't care really. Lifting his wand again, he pointed it at the glass, silently casting a spell, and the glass was suddenly filling with the muggle drink, diet coke.

Yes, Voldemort, Muggle-Hater, Dark Lord, He-who-must-not-be-named, liked diet coke. If anyone found out, he would be mortified. He paused for a minute. Just in case, he cast a simple illusion in the glass, so it looked like it was filled with blood. Unpleasant-looking, certainly, but it fit right in with the 'big, bad, evil, dark lord' image.

A flick of his wand later, Voldemort was reclining in the throne, a long red straw reaching from the glass and extending into his mouth. His minions could NOT come in now. If Wormtail had been in, and had just happened to wander into that particular room at that particular time, he would have found himself in a lot of pain.

Truth be told, Voldemort absolutely hated Wormtail. The only reason Wormtail was alive to be hated was the fact that he had helped Voldemort. Or attempted to, anyway. That pathetic excuse for a rat would still be running about in the sewers if he could. The only reason Wormtail had stayed with Voldemort had been that Voldemort could offer protection. Sure, there was still the risk that an auror would get you, but half the people arrested nowadays weren't death eaters. For instance, Stan Shunpike. He was locked up in Azkaban, because he was "overheard talking about death eaters secret plans."

Secret plans, hah! Voldemort snorted. According to his spies in the ministry, Stan had been talking about plans for his grandmothers surprise birthday party. Aurors had overheard part of the conversation and jumped to conclusions, as usual. Not that Voldemort was complaining. He'd never liked the Shunpike family anyway. Too open-minded.

Voldemort reached into his robes, ad pulled out a long piece of parchment, a quill and some ink. The parchment had what appeared to be a long list on it, with the header, "To Kill List". Topping the list was, of course, Harry Potter. Next came Dumbledore. Hopefully that would be accomplished soon, if Malfoy's boy was to be trusted. Then again, if he was anything like his father, he'd be a blithering idiot. But Lucius Malfoy was a blithering idiot with a lot of influence in the ministry.

Next on the list was the Weasley family. All of them. Far too muggle-loving for their own good. After that came a very general category- Muggles. All of them, well, not all of them. It would be fun to have some around to annoy, and anyway, if he killed all of them, who would make diet coke?

After that, the list of names continued over 7 feet of parchment. And Voldemort had small writing. There were a lot of people he didn't like. He stuck the end of his quill into the bottle of ink, raised it and wrote "Shunpike family" at the end of the list.

He rolled the list back up into a scroll and shoved it back into his pocket. He noticed that his glass of diet coke (blood to everyone else) was getting empty. He scowled and raised his wand. Seconds later, Voldemort was reclining in his throne again, the glass full to the brim.

Now what? Voldemort closed his eyes and let his mind wander. It landed on his list, or, more specifically, the first person mentioned on the list. Harry Potter.

Harry Potter. The Boy-Who-Lived. The Boy-Who-Wouldn't-Frickin-Die. Was it really too much to ask that one of Voldemort's plans involving the boy would go right? Totally, fully, 100 right? What was so wrong with that? Other people got their plans to go right first time!

How did the boy manage to survive, anyway? Hadn't Voldemort taken every precaution, had backup plans in case things turned pear-shaped (which they usually did) and made sure that there was no way Potter could survive? Apparently not.

Potter had even destroyed the prophecy that Voldemort had been trying to get last year, and, worse still, he'd done it by ACCIDENT! Months of planning wasted all because Harry Potter's pocket wasn't deep enough to hold the glass sphere. Why was it a glass sphere, anyway? Why not a cube? Or a pyramid? Why did it have to be a stupid ball shape? And Glass? Whose bright idea was that? Ever heard of unbreakable charms?

All this thinking of Potter and his annoying ability of surviving and ruining whatever plans involved him had gotten the resident dark lord into a bad mood. And when dark lords get into bad moods, everyone suffers.

If there was an everyone. Right now, the building was silent. The only noise came from Diagon Alley, and even then sound was distant, muffled by walls. There probably weren't many people out in Diagon Alley, anyway. Business tended to slow during wars.

Voldemort sighed. Correction, he exhaled. 'Voldemort sighed' didn't help the image he was trying to build. Sighing made him sound weak and weedy, like he had been rejected by a girl or something.

Girl. Hah! The only women in Voldemort's life were either being killed or were killers themselves. And the only female killer he had in his inner circle was mad as a hatter. An exceptionally mad hatter. And anyway, romance was weak and weedy. As was having friends. Though, admittedly, he _did _get lonely sometimes. But his minions could NEVER know that. If they somehow found out, he'd always have to put up with the company of at least one of those idiots.

Those minions were so deluded; some of them even considered themselves his _friends_. Again, friends were weak and weedy. Who needed friends? The only friend Voldemort ever had was Nagini, and she was currently sleeping in a closet somewhere. Anyway, did snakes really count as friends, even to a parselmouth?

Voldemort had always liked snakes, ever since he had been a little kid at that orphanage in London. However, if anyone ever found out about his other favourite animal, he'd never live it down! It was even worse that liking diet coke! How would his minions react if they found out that their master, the Dark Lord Voldemort, liked kittens?

Yes, kittens. They were just so cute and cuddly. And weak and weedy too, but that didn't stop them. Voldemort nearly hated himself for even _tolerating_ the fluffballs, but there was something about them that drew him in.

Unlike rabbits, he thought. Rabbits were evil. Of course, the only rabbit he knew belonged to some twat at the orphanage he'd grown up in. What was the name of the twat again? Barney Small? Bertie Samson? Billy Stubbs, that was it. And the rabbit was a big white ball of fur with glowing red eyes. It attacked him once. The scar took years to fade. Of course, the rabbit was mysteriously found hanging from the rafters the next day. Everyone at the orphanage had suspected him of doing it, but couldn't prove it. Voldemort's protests that the creature must have been suicidal after being owned by Stubbs hadn't been well received either. Apparently saying stuff like that was 'insensitive and cruel'.

Voldemort smirked. If they thought he was bad then, what would they think of him now?

But seriously, rabbits were evil. He hadn't voiced this theory to anyone because Dark Lords weren't afraid of anything, and especially not little fuzzy things like rabbits. Maybe when he ruled the world he'd order all rabbits to be killed. And he'd sure that there would be lots more fluffy little kittens.

Maybe the kittens could kill the rabbits. Make it a little fuzzy massacre. He chuckled at the thought. Then he realised that Dark Lords do not chuckle. It is also a very un-Dark-Lord thing to do. Maybe he should make another list of what is and isn't allowed when you're a dark lord.

But then, what if his minions found it? It was alright with his to-kill list and his might-be-converted-to-our-side list and his to-do list (although that was a bit iffy), but an essay on "What Dark Lords can and can't do without ruining their image"? That would totally ruin his image! Unless it kept it a total secret, not letting it out of his sight. But then, all his death eaters would get suspicious of it. One of the less-trustworthy minions would attempt to steal it. And sooner or later, one might succeed. And then what? He'd be the laughing stock of everyone! And he'd been the subject of everyone's amusement far too many times in the past. Growing up in an orphanage wasn't easy, especially with little brats like Billy Stubbs in the way!

Billy Stubbs wasn't the worst. There was Bobby Donnelly and Greta Cox, and then there was Janine Jones. Janine (Or, as most called her, Giant JJ) was the biggest bully in the entire orphanage. He was a bully too, but way down the food chain. He'd had potential to become top bully in a few years and JJ'd noticed that. She took an instant dislike to him, and she'd stuffed his head down the toilet more times than she had with everyone else put together.

Voldemort wondered what had happened to her. She was 9 years older than him, leaving the orphanage when he was 8. That was the time he'd learned how to control his powers properly, and he soon became head honcho. But what had happened to her?

He decided to track her down. Say he was trying to organise a reunion. Then he'd take her out for drinks, under a glamour of course, drug her drink then drag her off to… here…. then kill her! And it would be so much fun! Giant JJ had never liked kittens. Maybe he could kill her by having kittens maul her to death!

But would kittens maul someone? Kittens were cute and small and fuzzy; and they didn't look like they could hurt a fly. Mice were a different matter. All kittens should hunt mice. Voldemort didn't have anything against mice in general; but kittens rule all! Except for him. He didn't answer to anyone but himself, and all kittens and other life forms should bow down to him!

He liked his minions bowing down and prostrating themselves at his feet. It made him feel better about himself. And it made him feel taller. Really, as a dark lord he should tower above all his minions. When he was calling a meeting and they were all in their death eater garb, he felt really short with all those pointy hats around. Maybe he'd order them all to be shorter than him when in his presence. And maybe he'd lose the pointy hats. Change them to hoods, maybe. Or balaclavas. Actually, maybe he'd just give the entire uniform a total makeover. Who had designed the first version? He hadn't commissioned pointy hats, had he? No, he was sure he hadn't. He'd just ordered robes. Scary and black. Yeah, that was what he'd ordered. "200 robes, one size fits all. Must be black and as scary and possible". Since when were pointy hats scary? Maybe it was a fad going around that he didn't remember.

He pulled his to-do list out of another one of his deep pockets and opened it. It, again, was over 7 feet long in his small handwriting. It contained such gems as "Make Wormtail pick up dry cleaning" and "Devise less messy method of murdering people". He added "Design and commission new mandatory death eater uniform." As an afterthought, he added, "Note: Do not use 'Astounding Ali's eerie attire for any occasion' again just because he does the cheapest. Design own this time." Satisfied, Voldemort scanned the list for anything he could do now, since he wasn't currently doing anything constructive.

There was quite a lot. He could devise that less-messy-murder, or plot next week's raid. He could even do his taxes. He looked at the list, and then looked back at his comfy throne and diet-coke-that-looked-like-blood, complete with straw. He'd never had an amazing amount of willpower.

As he settled back into his throne, he heard a scuffling downstairs. Sounded like Wormtail was back from his spying assignment at the ministry.

And thus ended his few hours of peace. He sighed (pardon, _exhaled!_), summoned Wormtail, and vanished his coke. Time to go back to work!


End file.
